Current Events: Israel At War Iran and Hezbollah

Current Events, Episode 160

israel at war, EXPLAINED: Iran & hezbollah

october 24, 2023

BLOG VERSION below | PODCAST VERSION HERE

What does Iran have to do with Israel’s war against Hamas? A lot! We’re zooming out to look at Iran and it’s proxy army, Hezbollah, the terrorist group threatening to start a war along Israel’s northern border.

In 1982, the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, was speaking in front of a United States Senate hearing about foreign aid to Israel. One senator was sharply critical of Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank. Joe Biden, senator from Delaware, suggested that if Israel didn’t stop the settlements, the United States should cease its economic assistance. Menachem Begin’s response was legendary:

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

If you want to know why now-President Joe Biden is overwhelming Israel with aid and support, he’ll tell you that it was his personal encounters with Golda Meir in the 1970s that solidified his Zionism. But I'll bet that this humbling encounter with Begin in 1982, had a significant impact. Perhaps this was the moment when Joe Biden really got it. Got that Israel wasn’t just about security challenges but a commitment to Jewish civilization that transcended geopolitical realities and superpower policy preferences.

And so at this moment we find the United States rallied behind Israel to an unprecedented degree. For decades America has supported Israel: militarily, diplomatically, economically, and rhetorically. But never so intensely all at once. Israelis may be cursing Benjamin Netanyahu but they can’t get enough of Biden. The United States has rushed weapons and supplies in to Israel, and is poised to provide billions of dollars in additional support. An American ship in the Red Sea shot down two missiles heading in Israel’s direction from Yemen. We don’t actually know what the target was, but the missiles were coming from an area controlled by an Iranian-backed terrorist group.

And that is key: Iranian-backed. It describes terrorist groups around the Middle East, including Hamas, but especially the biggest one of all. Hezbollah, on Israel’s northern border. Like Hamas, it is an Islamic terrorist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction, but is vastly more powerful than its ally in Gaza, and takes its order directly from Iran. Since the October 7 massacre Hezbollah has launched a steady stream of attacks on Israel, which Israel has responded to in kind. The threat of a full-blown war looms large. And it’s this threat that has everyone nervous, including President Biden.

Biden has repeatedly warned others from taking advantage of Israel’s conflict with Gaza to initiate further warfare. He means Hezbollah, and through them, Iran. Should war break out with Hezbollah, Biden has not ruled out direct American military action in support of Israel.

I still have too many things to talk about than can fit into one podcast episode. But I promised to look at the bigger picture that explains how Iran and Hezbollah and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia fit into and explain this crisis. So let’s zoom out. If you’re a longtime listener to this podcast then you’ve heard me say not to make the mistake of thinking that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is just about the Israelis and the Palestinians. We’re in Day 17 of this war. October 24. I’m your host, Jason Harris, and this is Jew Oughta Know.

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So what does Iran want? Iran wants to rule the Middle East. To establish an empire of fundamentalist Islam from the Mediterranean Sea through the Persian Gulf. And they’ve had a lot of success. Much of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen are under their sway, along with Gaza and parts of the West Bank. How Iran got so much influence in these places is a much bigger story. But the simplified answer that applies to us here is that Iran gains influence by using terrorist groups throughout the Middle East. Iran provides money, weapons, training, and more. These group can be used to support Iranian interests or destabilize Iran’s enemies, and can wage attacks on Iran’s behalf without Iran having to take the official blame.

In its quest for its Middle Eastern empire, Iran has two major enemies. Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis because they are the opposing sect of Islam. Iran is Shia Muslim, the Saudis are Sunnis. It’s a historical animosity that goes back to the early foundations of Islam. But also because they, too, want to be the Middle Eastern heavyweights. Israel is an enemy because, well, the Iranian regime hates the Jews. Both countries enjoy the backing and support of the West, especially the United States, which is Iran’s Uber-arch nemesis, what the regime likes to call the Great Satan.

So, for example, in Yemen, Iran beefed up terrorist groups battling the government there, which sucked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates into a punishing war that lasted for years, and still isn’t resolved. This led to attacks on Saudi soil, targeting its oil installations, the country’s source of wealth.

It’s a similar story in Gaza. Iran didn’t create Hamas, and Hamas doesn’t report to Iran directly, but Iran is one of the groups’ main patrons. Iran also supports a smaller terrorist outfit in Gaza called Islamic Jihad, which is closely aligned with Hamas, took part in the October 7 massacre, and probably has several dozen Israeli hostages. The goal is to use these groups to keep Israel distracted, forced to spend blood and treasure that, Iran hopes, will gradually weaken the Jewish State until it can be destroyed once and for all.

So Iran wants a Middle Eastern empire. It seeds terrorist groups all over the region to support its interests and attack its enemies. But that’s not enough. Iran is simultaneously pursuing another strategy to dominate: getting nuclear weapons.

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For a couple decades now Iran has been steadily pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. It hasn’t been an easy road. The West, led by the United States, has imposed harsh sanctions that massively damaged Iran’s economy. In 2010 the Stuxnet computer virus wrecked essential equipment. We’re pretty sure that was the United States and Israel. Then Iran’s top nuclear scientists started getting assassinated. That was probably Israel. And then someone snuck into a warehouse and stole basically the entire nuclear archive files. That was definitely Israel, they revealed it to the world. All these efforts set back Iran’s nuclear development, but not enough. They’re getting close. Some estimates say they could be months away.

Nuclear weapons provide cover for Iran to do whatever it wants. It’s not so much that the ayatollah’s are going to drop bombs on Israel and Saudi Arabia, although that is certainly a worry. Nukes are the ultimate insurance card that allow you to behave however you want without worrying that someone is going to try to overthrow your regime.

Israel has long maintained that an Iranian nuclear bomb is the absolute red line: the biggest existential threat facing Israel. Israel has threatened to attack Iran’s facilities if it thinks the country is getting to the point of having a bomb. It’s done this twice before: against Iraq in 1981 and against Syria in 2007. Both attacks destroyed those countries’ nuclear programs. But Iran learned from those mistakes: instead of having one nuclear weapons plant it has spread its facilities all over the country, burying them deep in mountain bunkers that are very hard to destroy. Still, Israel is brilliant as this stuff and any attack is likely to set back Iran’s nuclear program by years.

So if nukes are your ultimate insurance against getting overthrown, then you need an insurance policy for that insurance policy. And for that, Iran has Hezbollah.

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Hezbollah is another Islamic terrorist group seeking Israel’s destruction, but it’s not Palestinian, it’s Lebanese. Israel invaded Lebanon in the early 1980s in order to root out terrorist groups along the border. They ended up occupying parts of southern Lebanon. Iran brought together a bunch of militias under a new group called Hezbollah, which means “Party of God,” and the goal was to push out the Israelis using guerrilla warfare, suicide attacks, rockets, missiles, and everything else. Israel would spend most of the next two decades bogged down in grinding warfare, while the rest of Lebanon was engulfed in a civil war.

Very long story short, Hezbollah eventually took on a political dimension, winning power through elections and controlling all of southern Lebanon. Over time they became the most powerful entity in Lebanon, stronger even than the Lebanese Army, and basically have a veto power over what goes on in Lebanon, which is itself nowadays essentially a failed state. Southern Lebanon is less “southern Lebanon” than the State of Hezbollah. Israel left Lebanon in 2000 but Hezbollah continued its terrorism. The two fought a second war in 2006. Ever since then, Syria and Iran have been rearming and funding the organization, which is now less a terrorist group than a sophisticated, powerful terrorist army.

In the last two weeks since the massacre, Hamas has fired around 4,500 rockets at Israel. Compare that with Hezbollah, which has around 150,000 rockets as well as long-range missiles that can hit anywhere in Israel. No one knows how many fighters they have but it could be a few tens of thousands. Hamas can’t shoot down Israeli planes or helicopters but Hezbollah can. And they have massive stockpiles of anti-tank missiles, anti-ship missiles, and possibly even chemical weapons. Like Hamas, Hezbollah embeds all this stuff within the civilian population, in hospitals and schools and homes.

So Hezbollah is a massive threat. And whereas Hamas is supported by Iran but is also independent from them, Hezbollah takes its orders directly from the Iranian leadership.

The point of all this is that Iran has a powerful army sitting on Israel’s border that can, at any moment, launch a devastating war. This is Iran’s insurance policy. If Israel bombs Iran’s nuclear sites, Iran is going to unleash Hezbollah on Israel’s cities.

The question is whether that calculus has changed in the past two weeks.

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Since Hamas’ massacre on October 7, Israel has faced a steady stream of attacks from Hezbollah in the north. Drones and mortars and anti-tank missiles, to which Israel has responded with its own fire. The tempo seems to be increasing. A couple dozen Hezbollah fighters have been killed, along with possibly a few civilians. In Israel the count is three soldiers and one civilian, with several more civilians critically injured. The situation is extremely dangerous and very volatile, and the back-and-forth attacks are happening several times a day. No one knows when or if things will break into all-out confrontation. Hezbollah has said it will attack if Israel invades Gaza. Israel has threatened to eliminate Hezbollah with the same ferocity as it’s going after Hamas. Israel has evacuated as many as a hundred thousand Israelis from the north and is gearing up for a second front in this war with Hamas.

This is what has the United States so worried, and why Biden has moved two aircraft carrier groups into the Middle East. America is ramping up its military readiness and preparing to have to jump into battle. Biden has not ruled out American troops joining Israel against Hezbollah if that front were to open, which is why he is constantly warning Iran not to release Hezbollah. As bad as war with Hamas is, conflict with Hezbollah would be an order of magnitude worse.

Now I’ll say this, and it’s entirely possible that I’ll be proven wrong by the time you hear this. I don’t think Hezbollah is ready for all all-out war, and I don’t think Iran is going to order them to go for it. And that’s because both Hezbollah and Iran stand to lose huge. First of all, a war would devastate what’s left of Lebanon, we’re talking total economic collapse, which is not what Hezbollah wants. But more than that, Iran would be giving up its insurance policy. If Hezbollah goes for total war, Israel might conclude that it no longer has a reason not to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites, an attack that would be both a retaliation against Iran, and a pre-emption, since Iran doesn’t yet have a nuclear bomb. As much as Iran is probably itching to take advantage of this opportunity to smash Israel, these are huge risks.

And that’s why I say that Israel’s most important goal right now is to restore its military deterrence. Part of the reason it’s hitting Hamas so hard is to signal to Hezbollah and Iran what will happen if they jump in. Israel is saying, “Don’t think this massacre weakened us. What we’re doing to Gaza we can do to you, too.”

So I think that every party here has every incentive not to escalate. And that was another one of Biden’s message when he visited Israel. Don’t rush into a ground invasion that is going to trigger a wider regional war. But it may not take much for that to happen anyway. And if Israel invades Gaza, perhaps all bets are off.

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None of this really explains the nexus of Iran and Hamas and why this massacre happened now. We have to go back to Iran trying to form an empire, and it’s up against Saudi Arabia and Israel.

For decades Saudi Arabia and Israel were sworn enemies. But in recent years they have recognized their common enemy in Iran and have been quietly working together behind the scenes. But it’s become clear in recent months that the two countries are on the brink of an historic peace agreement, what the United States suggested was just weeks or a couple months away. This terrifies Iran.

As I mentioned, while Hezbollah is more or less a direct offshoot of Iran, Hamas is more independent. It’s unclear how much Iran was involved with, or even knew about, the October 7 massacre. Though there is no doubt that they fully support Hamas’ genocidal intentions against Israel. Certainly part of Hamas’ calculations for launching this attack was the opportunity to disrupt Iran’s enemies from making peace. If Hamas could drag Israel into a nasty war in Gaza in which lots of Palestinians would get killed, that would force the Saudis to call off the diplomacy. That’s because while diplomacy with the Saudi leaders is popular, it isn’t with the people. The Saudis would be worried about their own popularity if they’re seen as making common cause with the enemies of the Palestinians. And now this is exactly what has happened. The Saudi-Israel deal is officially on ice for the time being.

Benjamin Netanyahu thought that he could make peace with all the Arab countries without having to do anything about the Palestinians. Hamas has proven how wrong that calculation was.

Again, this doesn’t mean that Iran gave Hamas the order to carry out the massacre, or even that they were part of planning it. That’s not quite how that relationship works. And Hamas had its own reasons for the attack beyond just disrupting Middle Eastern diplomacy.

It’s impossible to say how this will all shake out. Israel has peace deals with Egypt and Jordan. And in the last few years added the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — what has been called The Abraham Accords. These past two weeks have strained those relations but haven’t broken them. But there’s no telling what a sustained ground war in Gaza would do, or what would happen if Hezbollah and Iran jumped in.

So here we are. Waiting. With trepidation and worry and sorrow. But not with trembling knees. That is not for us anymore.

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Okay, so that was a bit of the bigger-picture geopolitics in terms of how Iran fits into all this. There’s a lot more we could discuss: Qatar and Egypt, for instance, are big players who I haven’t talked much about yet.

Although we’ve seen tons of images and videos of the massacre — those taken by Hamas during the attack and those taken by Israel afterwards — the Israeli military has been actively screening out the worst bits. But yesterday they showed a group of journalists some 45 minutes of unedited footage taken by Hamas fighters. Footage that apparently left some reporters throwing up. In the Atlantic, the journalist Graeme Wood describes it as “pure, predatory sadism.” One Hamas fighter called up his parents to gloat about what a hero he was for having killed ten Jews.

Hamas is now trying to claim that its fighters didn’t kill or capture any civilians, just a few soldiers as per their orders. Instead the butchery was the result of overzealous ordinary Palestinians who followed Hamas into Israel. But of course it’s a monstrous lie. According to Wood, the IDF chose to show the footage to refute the comparison that some journalists have made between the IDF and Hamas. He quotes the Israeli military official: “What we shared with you, you should know it. We are not looking for kids to kill them. We have to share it with you so no one will have an idea that someone is equal to another.”

And yet. Before the massacre was even over there were people condemning Israel for having brought this savagery upon itself. That it was the natural and just result of Israeli settler-colonialism and occupation. That executing children was fair game in the act of resistance and national liberation, in fact something to be celebrated. These weren’t just the usual accusations from Arab countries but coming out of places like Harvard and Stanford. The press, too, has been quick to blame Israel for atrocities against the Palestinians that turned out to have been committed by the terrorist groups themselves.

So I want to get into the response. Call it the Cultural Response. That’s the target for my next episode, but of course, I reserve the right to change if the conditions warrant. I’ve got a few things going on this week that means I won’t be able to publish anything until early next week, so keep a look out then. Huge thanks to the people writing in with kind words and encouragement, I am so glad you are finding this podcast meaningful. As always I’m at jewoughtaknow.com and my email is jewoughtaknowpodcast@gmail.com. Talk to you soon, Am Yisrael Chai — the Jewish people live.